Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
It’s a crazy time for theme parks, especially when you look at Disney’s latest moves. It feels like every week brings a new announcement with news that’s sometimes exciting or unfortunate. There are major expansions on the way, particularly Galaxy’s Edge on both U.S. coasts. The downside of that massive investment from Disney is rising ticket prices, extra fees, and cost cuts. To navigate this complex landscape, I need an expert that’s been inside this world for many years. Len Testa is the perfect guy to lead us safely through this confusing theme park era.
Len is my guest on this episode of The Tomorrow Society Podcast to discuss our excitement and some concerns with Disney’s theme parks. As the president of Touring Plans and co-host of The Disney Dish Podcast, Len has a close perspective. Particularly in Orlando, we’re seeing changes that will have a serious impact. With the 50th anniversary of Walt Disney World just three years away, the pace will keep increasing.
Last year, Len returned to the podcast to answer seven questions about Disney World. For Len’s third appearance, I’ve brought another slate of topics on what’s happening now and in the future. Our conversation includes a close look at these issues:
- Does Disney consider Pandora: The World of Avatar a success?
- How do we explain the huge increase in wait times in January 2018?
- What is the next step in the evolution of transportation at Walt Disney World?
- How long could the lines be for the opening of Galaxy’s Edge?
- What is the upcoming attraction that will become a sleeper hit?
Show Notes: Len Testa
Learn more about Touring Plans.com and follow Len Testa on Twitter.
Find the latest episodes of The Disney Dish Podcast with Jim Hill.
Tomorrow Society Podcast, Episode 20: Seven Disney World Questions with Len Testa
Tomorrow Society Podcast, Episode 8: Len Testa on Touring Plans.com and Disney’s Crowd Surge
Transcript
Dan Heaton: What is the future of theme parks? Is Pandora at Disney’s Animal Kingdom a success? And what’s up with all the long lines at Disney World in January? Len Testa is here to answer those and a lot more questions. You’re listening to the Tomorrow Society Podcast.
(theme music)
Dan Heaton: Hey there. Thanks for joining me here on Episode 39 of the Tomorrow Society Podcast. I am your host, Dan Heaton. It’s such a fascinating time right now for theme parks and the industry. Just looking at Disney World, you have Toy Story Land coming this summer, Galaxy’s Edge in 2019. You have Guardians of the Galaxy and Ratatouille at Epcot, TRON at the Magic Kingdom, and that’s just the really basic stuff. When you look overseas, you have expansions to Paris and Tokyo. Back at Disneyland, you have a Marvel land coming to DCA along with Galaxy’s Edge.
Plus, if you think even more recently, just in the past few weeks you’ve had the new fees for parking at the hotels. You had the Redhead being replaced at Pirates of the Caribbean and people had some vocal thoughts on both of those. What I’ve just described only scratches the surface of what’s happening in the theme park industry, and I wanted to go a little further with this conversation. And that’s why it’s always great to have Len Testa on the show because I know we can dive in deeper into what Disney is doing and look at things like transportation and the gondolas that are coming.
What’s coming next? Or even beyond that, what’s the future of theme parks? What’s going to happen when we’ve gotten through all of these blockbuster additions? And that’s why I love having Len on the show because you could just ask him questions about all these things he has plenty to say about everyone and if you are a fan of Disney podcasts in particular, you’re very familiar with Len through WDW Today and his current work on the Disney Dish. So it’s really cool to have them on the show. And because of that, I’m going to stop rambling right now because I would like to get to that conversation. So here is my discussion with Len Testa.
(theme music)
Dan Heaton: I am thrilled to once again be speaking with a theme park expert who is back for his third time on the podcast. He is the president of Touring Plans, the coauthor of the Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World, and also co-hosts the Disney Dish Podcast with Jim Hill. It is Len Testa! Len, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast.
Len Testa: Thanks for having me on, Dan. I really appreciate it.
Dan Heaton: Well, great. We did this about a year ago where I brought you seven questions which I think turned into about 35, but I’ve brought to you seven questions or seven topics to talk about, but before we do that, I did want to ask you what’s been going on lately at Touring Plans and what are you guys doing over there?
Len Testa: We’ve released a couple of interesting things. We updated our Disney Dining Plan Calculator so that you can figure out whether the dining plan makes sense for you. We’ve updated all of our crowd calendars based on what’s been going on with the parks since the beginning of the year. We’re also working on updates for a Toy Story Land when it opens and then, you know, looking out a little farther to Galaxy’s Edge.
Dan Heaton: So as far as Toy Story Land, that’ll be interesting. Are you guys expecting there to be a big bump from that? Because I feel like there was excitement but now it’s kind of died down and a lot of people are just looking right past it.
Len Testa: I think it’ll be popular with parents with small children because of the lack of those kinds of attractions in the park already. So basically, right now it’s Toy Story Mania or Disney Jr. When the park opens, I expect there to be a lot more demand for the Toy Story Land rides because of that. And also it helps that Disney put the entrance to Toy Story Mania within Toy Story Land. So people will be able to see the other attractions as they go to Toy Story Mania. And I think that’s going to help those other two attractions a lot. Here’s the thing that I think is interesting about it, though. Alien Swirling Saucers; it’s going to have Fastpass Plus. I can’t figure that out because that can’t be a large capacity attraction.
Dan Heaton: Yeah. Maybe they are just expecting the demand to be so high because I mean, I’m trying to think if you consider like the Carousel or something. It’s going to be different than that, but are they going to do something like Dumbo where they have enough space to put all the people in there?
Len Testa: Yeah, that’s what I thought. I thought it would be. It would work almost exactly like Dumbo where half of the ride’s gonna be dedicated to FastPass at least, you know, maybe maybe 80 percent, but it should work the, uh, the same way. Disney hasn’t said that they’re going to do that innovative queue thing that they do with Dumbo in The Magic Kingdom. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw something like that at some point in the future. They probably would’ve, would’ve said upfront that that’s how it was going to work. So we’ll see.
Dan Heaton: Yeah, they probably would have sold it as this is our new, that they would name it something different. It wouldn’t be the same thing. It’d be like our special interactive playground or something, but it’s just interesting because I know we’ve been seeing, they’re seeing clips of them putting the Slinky Dog Coaster in and I just find it I think, I guess just because there’s been so many announcements right now for everything coming in 2021, and two and three that it’s like, oh yeah, that’s coming out this summer. I kinda, I kinda forgot. So it’ll be interesting to see, see how everybody feels about it.
Len Testa: Yeah, we’ve got that. Also at the Studios, we’ve got the Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway, which is based on the new Mickey Mouse cartoons, you know, and those things will be open about the same time as at Galaxy’s Edge. But yeah, I think you’re right to an extent. Lots of people are looking past all of the stuff that’s gonna happen over the next 18 months.
Dan Heaton: Yeah, that’s going to be interesting. So a lot of my questions are kind of about a lot of those. So I’m going to try not to cannibalize my own questions here. I don’t want to oversell them though, but let’s just dive right in. Okay. Number 1. Now Pandora has been open for about 10 months. We haven’t seen much of a drop in wait times, amazingly. And you know, I visited in January, I thought it was really cool beyond, you know, the capacity kind of being weird. So now that we’re about 10 months out from what you’ve gathered from attendance, satisfaction, everything you’re hearing, do you think, I mean it’s a success, but is this the success that Disney hoped for in terms of like attendance and what it really is done for the park on the whole?
Len Testa: Okay. So it’s not, it’s not like Harry Potter was for Universal because that’s a once in a generation thing that, you know, we will probably see it again with Galaxy’s Edge, but there are a few properties in the world and few movie franchises in the world, that are gonna act like that. I think Disney is super happy with the ratings that Flight of Passage is getting. It’s the highest rated attraction in any Universal or Disney theme park in the United States according to our raters.
I mean the only people that don’t like it or small children, which I kind of understand that, but you know, in terms of, in terms of response, I think it’s, it’s done everything that Disney could hope for once people are in the park. I don’t think it’s driving much demand to the Animal Kingdom. Maybe a little bit, but certainly not the, you know, 40 percent bump in attendance that we saw with, uh, with Universal Orlando.
We expected somewhere around five percent, I think five to eight percent. And I think that’s, that’s what Disney is getting out of it. So it’s, they’re pleasantly surprised with how it worked out. But I think here’s what’s telling about it Dan, all the announcements that just came out over the last month or so about park expansions in California park expansions in Paris, park expansions in Japan. None of them mentioned Pandora. None. If it was, if it was a success, Disney would be duplicating it. So it’s not. I don’t think it’s viewed as a success within the company.
Dan Heaton: That’s interesting because it’s easy to look at the ride, the lines. I mean a lot of that is capacity, especially with Flight of Passage though I’ve heard, you know, it’s very good. I didn’t get to ride on it, but it’s easy to look at that and say wow, it’s a home run, but that’s kinda why I wanted to ask because I’m thinking like the Animal Kingdom didn’t seem any more crowded. That area is more crowded, but other areas aren’t, and I doubt they’re getting people now just visiting the resort for that. So it seems like it’s helped them like as a complimentary thing to fill out the park.
Len Testa: That’s exactly it.
Dan Heaton: Yeah. But not as much. Like, okay, this is going to be something that it’s not on the level of Galaxy’s Edge.
Len Testa: It’s not a destination attraction. People are not going to go to Disney World just to ride that. And I think that’s what, back in 2011, that’s what Disney was anticipating. I think as we got closer and closer to it, we realized that that wasn’t going to be it. I mean, the other thing too, from a Disney perspective in the first full quarter in which Pandora was opened, Disney didn’t mention a single thing about it in their quarterly update to financial analysts. So it’s from an, from an Imagineering perspective, I think it’s a huge success.
The Imagineers did fantastic work with what is, let’s face it, a flawed premise, right? And Pandora was never… Avatar was never going to be a film franchise that you build attractions out of the Imagineers got stuck with it because Bob Iger wanted to, uh, make sure that Universal didn’t work with James Cameron. So the Imagineers had to do the best they could. And they did literally the best that anyone could hope for. My hat’s off to all of the Imagineers that worked on thIs, but it’s not a Harry Potter thing.
Dan Heaton: Yeah, I was blown away. I had seen pictures, but just walking around that place, what they could do with a property I don’t care about at all. I saw the movie, but I couldn’t remember it.
Len Testa: I said this in the book. I was like, you know I mentioned that Na’vi River Journey ride, right? But, but imagine it in Galaxy’s Edge. Imagine instead of the Shaman at the end, you’ve got Obi Wan Kenobi, and he’s doing some Jedi ritual that we’ve never seen before, but that’s part of the Star Wars canon. Like it’s actually official stuff that no one has ever seen before. And imagine he, you know, that the entire ceremony that he goes through is like 30 minutes long and you know, you have to ride it seven or eight times to get the entire ceremony’s dialogue down. Do you know what those lines would be like, Dan? And you couldn’t ride it seven or eight times in your lifetime. The lines would be that long, right? Because people care about Star Wars. Nobody cares about Avatar.
Dan Heaton: Yeah. And it’s amazing.
Len Testa: I say nobody cares about Avatar. There’s like, one dude on Twitter that rants at me every time I say that. Very few people care about it for good.
Dan Heaton: Nobody does. And it’s funny because it could really just be, hey, we’re gonna make this land with blue aliens that James Cameron thought of and everybody would be like, that’s awesome. But it’s Avatar and it’s like…ugh.
Len Testa: Or they could have just done it as Beastly Kingdom.,right? And it would’ve been. Yeah, I know. That’s fine. We all know, we all know why it got done. I salute every single Imagineer and every single person that built that land did better than anyone could have hoped for. Uh, they were, they were handicapped from the beginning. And let’s move on.
Dan Heaton: Definitely. I want to ask one question kind of tangential to that on this So the one big thing that I noticed is like the ridiculous line for Flight of Passage. I was there on a Friday in January. It was before MLK weekend, but it was not a, It was like on your schedule is like a seven I think at the end. And I saw that overflow line heading towards Harambe and I was like, that Is insane. So thinking about Galaxy’s Edge there. So do you think Pandora has taught Disney enough to make Galaxy’s Edge? You know, It’s going to be crazy, but.
Len Testa: Well, it’s too late. I mean if they learned anything, the plans for Galaxy’s Edge were cast years ago. So, you know, if Disney did not anticipate a Harry Potter level of demand when Galaxy’s Edge opens, they will have fundamentally… it would have been, will have made a fundamental mistake. The line to get into Disney’s Hollywood Studios when Galaxy’s Edge opens, people will camp out the night before, and Disney has to make sure that they have accommodations for that because people will want to do that. Yeah. So we’ll have to figure something like that out. I don’t think Disney’s, I think it’s in the back of Disney’s mind that they have to prepare for those things. I don’t think they’ve got plans for it yet, although I should ask, I should ask.
Dan Heaton: Yeah. You say the night before, think of Phantom Menace. Think about how that was, you know, people camping out for, I don’t even know how long ridiculous amounts it won’t be like that, but you know, there’s gonna be somebody who’s going to go there like a week in advance and then start like a Snapchat or something and just be there the whole time. So I don’t know a night before might be not enough.
Len Testa: Back when Star Tours 2.0 opened, one of our employees, Scarlett Litton, basically stayed in the Studios I think everyday for like two months and waited in front of the green wall until it was open so that she could be first in line and god bless her. And Scarlett, if you’re listening, I love you. think we need to hire Scarlett again to do this for Galaxy’s Edge. That would be the funniest thing that, yeah. I mean as soon as, as soon as the word gets out that it’s a, that the hand-off is going to happen from Imagineering to Park Ops and then Park Ops has to run the ride for a few days.
As soon as that happens, people, people will start waiting in line and again, I think Disney has to be prepared for it. I think the line to get into the park will be. I’ll be surprised if you could actually get in the park if you show up on the same day like, like I think if you show up at 8 am for a 9 am opening, there’s no way you will get into Galaxy’s Edge that day because there will be people that will have slept the night before. That will. yeah, it’s going to be insane.
Dan Heaton: I don’t even know. Like I think maybe I’ll see it a year later. I mean I’d love to go sooner, but coming from Missouri it’s like it’s not like I can just try a bunch of days like and I live in Orlando. It’s going to be insane. It will be fun but crazy.
Len Testa: What I’m interested in seeing is how Disney handles the annual pass holder and DVC previews for it. Because what I’m hearing in Disneyland, you know how like Disney has different tiers of annual pass, especially in southern California, that you won’t be invited to the preview unless you have the top tier pass, like basically everyone else with the, you know, the southern California annual pass or the, any passholder blackout dates, you won’t be able to get into the AP preview. Unless you, unless you pay for it. And I think Disney may do, that Disney may charge annual pass holders for the, for the previews and DVC holders. I think they know that they can charge $100 a person for the preview and it’ll sell out every day. Disney’s not above making that money.
Dan Heaton: No, I, I think you’re right. I think they’re going to find every hard ticket event or especially the AP previews, but anything they can do, one to kind of test it with fewer people because they need to do that. But also there’ll be a lot of soft opens and different things I would assume before they unleash it to the masses of people.
Len Testa: And the good thing is, is that Pandora showed us that Disney can build a really pretty immersive environment, but they’ve got to do way more than that for Galaxy’s Edge. Like I’ve said this a few times, if, if there are not self-navigating droids walking around Galaxy’s Edge, Disney will have failed. That is one of the minimum things that they have to do to make this land authentic. It’s been in every conceptual drawing. They’d been working on the patents for it for years. They’ve got the right employees for it. There is no technical or financial reason why we should not see droids walking around Galaxy’s Edge if it, if it doesn’t happen, it’s because management didn’t care. But, but, but let me say, I fully expect it to happen. There will be self-navigating autonomous droids in Galaxy’s Edge.
Dan Heaton: Wow. I’m trying to picture it. I can picture that land without that many crowds. How that could work and all the different stories you’re doing. Especially if that when the resort comes. I’m trying to picture that land. Like I’m comparing it to like when Happily Ever After is about to play and you’re on Main Street. I’m trying to picture that.
Len Testa: And it becomes like what? What was the second Mad Max movie?
Dan Heaton: Yeah, The Road Warrior. Like Thunderdome or something.
Len Testa: We’re missing the Tina Turner soundtrack. Otherwise it’d be Thunderdome.
Dan Heaton: All right, well let’s, let’s move on to question number two amazingly enough. All right, well I’m going to kind of flip it around a little bit. So I know we’re learning about so many new expansions. They announced upgrades to that horrible studios park in Paris. They got the new Marvel land at DCA, Galaxy’s Edge. Toy Story Land, so much to Epcot. So many blockbusters. So looking at the new attractions for you, what do you think is like the underrated gem? I think I’m teeing it up. I think we know what you’re gonna say. What is the underrated gem that we’re not thinking about that is going to be the huge hit that everybody loves?
Len Testa: Okay. Uh, what do you think I’m gonna say?
Dan Heaton: Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway?
Len Testa: Yes! That’s exactly it! Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway!
Dan Heaton: I was kind of scared to say the wrong thing there.
Len Testa: I love the new Mickey Mouse cartoons. Dan, if you, if your listeners listen, listen to the end of this podcast obviously, but then stop whatever you’re doing and go onto YouTube and watch the cartoons from beginning to end. They are hysterical. All of them are great and Disney’s still putting them out. I think they’ve put out like what? Fifty, 60, maybe more at a time. I first started watching them when I was on a Disney Cruise and new Disney pipes in the cartoons into the staterooms now, and I was just fascinated.
I remember the first time I saw them, I was like, this is like no other Mickey Mouse cartoon I’ve ever seen. Mickey is funny. He’s, he’s got human characteristics. He’s not, not always the good guy, right? Like sometimes he, he has regular human emotions like anger and greed and stuff like that. It’s, they’re just so funny. My favorite one. Have you ever seen these then?
Dan Heaton: Yes. I’ll have a story about this in a minute.
Len Testa: Have you seen, have you seen the Potato Land episode? It’s a takeoff on roadside attractions and Disneyland, which is just hysterical, but a fantastic cartoon. Uh, anyway, so supposedly in Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway, It’s going to be those same characters with the same spirit. So the same funny Mickey Mouse, not the traditional Mickey Mouse who couldn’t do anything bad, you know, from 1935 to 2007 or whatever. So I’m really looking forward to that.
I think there’s gonna be some interesting technology in there as well around dynamic ride systems like dynamic ride routing. So depending on what you feel about the ride, you may see different scenes from everyone else that will be interesting. Yeah. Anyway, that’s what I’m really looking forward to the most. I mean, obviously everyone’s looking forward to Galaxy’s Edge, but uh, but I think one of the things that aren’t Galaxy’s Edge that’s going to be my, my sleeper hit.
Dan Heaton: Well, it’s funny you mentioned those cartoons because we were there in January. We stayed at the Animal Kingdom Lodge and there’s a channel that at night all they play is those cartoons and my daughters watched them every night we were there. That’s all they wanted to do. The one night they just wanted to go back to the room to watch the cartoons basically.
Len Testa: Yeah, yeah. I mean there’s like 70 or 80 so you can, you can bring them up on YouTube and watch them all in chronological order. But yeah, they’re fantastic. The first time I saw them was on the cruise and it was like right before we were going to dinner and I would’ve been happy just ordering room service and watching, watching those cartoons because they were, they were fantastic. I remember we watched, we watched them all a couple of times and then you know, then as they would come out, like I actually have an alert now on to look for YouTube. A new one came out last night. I watched it last night as well.
Dan Heaton: Well that’s interesting. I need to look for those on YouTube because we have like a DVD but it only has like season one or season one, but they never released another DVD so like we, we can watch those so, but about the ride quickly. So I had not heard. I’ve heard about the patents, about the moods and various things you’re doing, but I hadn’t heard they were going to use it for this ride because with the screens and the different things they’re doing, they could, like you said, they could adjust it. Which that fascinates me. I wasn’t sure they were ready to do that this soon. I mean for something that coming out in about a year or so.
Len Testa: I think the thing that makes it interesting is that, can you do a test with it? Right. There are two, two patents I think that are interesting. One changes the vehicle path depending on what thing you’re looking at. So let’s say Disney showing you, and I’m just making this up, very colorful things on the left hand side, but very musical things on the right hand side. If you’re paying attention to the left hand side with the colorful things, Disney may change your path so that you always see colorful things because that’s what people are paying attention to. If however you’re paying attention to the musical stuff on the right hand side, Disney might change the path that you follow to show you more musical things.
I think that’s relatively straightforward to do in a ride like Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway, and they could use that as a testbed for future attractions. Like imagine you wanted to do it on a rollercoaster or on a more advanced ride system. I think that’s what you’ll see there. Plus Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway, the fact that you can imagine like a choose your own adventure. Uh, you know, that that might be, that might be interesting to you all end up on the same path, but they’ve got enough space in the Great Movie ride to do those alternate paths.
Dan Heaton: Yeah, that’s interesting because I, you know, I kind of wondered why that was put in that space, but that is one benefit there where, I mean one you’re right at the front of the park. So, and it is probably going to be popular, but two, you’ve got that big show building. You can adjust it where it’s not like you’re cramming it in and putting someone in front of a screen and there’s really not that much space. You actually shift people around. So I’m sure my daughters will love it. I just, you know, I don’t think I’m as probably interested in it as I probably should be based on what I’ve heard,
Len Testa: But what if the ride is dynamic, like Star Tours is then you might, than it might be more interesting I think. I think it helps that it’s going to be in the center of the park. It’s going to be a kid-friendly ride. And again, the Studios does not have a lot of those. It’s going to be voluminous in terms of capacity. And of course with Galaxy’s Edge you’re going to want as many big capacity rides as you can you can get because people are going to have to do something. So I think that’s a, that’s all an advantage for it. The other thing that amazes me about the Studios, now that we’re talking about high capacity stuff, have you seen the expansion of the parking lot that they’ve been doing? Basically tripling the size of the parking lot?
Dan Heaton: Whoa. No, I haven’t seen that. I mean, that makes sense to a point, but if they’re going to do that, you’d have to assume they’re going to have a lot more attractions.
Len Testa: Exactly. Great. Okay. Alright. So great. we’re, you know, we’re gonna, we’re gonna get, you know, 100 percent more people into the park. What are they, what are they goIng to do? I mean, how many times are you going to run Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular in a, in a day, right? I mean there’s, there’s just not that much to do in the park. And Galaxy’s Edge Is only going to be two attractions. Even when Galaxy’s Edge opens, and even when Toy Story Land opens, even when Runaway Railway opens, that will only be five attractions total.
Dan Heaton: Right? And then you add that on to, you know, the four or five, six, I’m, you know, depending on what you call it, attraction, you’re looking at 12 attractions.
Len Testa: Yeah. The park will have like nine rides, you know, when it’s done, plus some shows and stuff like that. If it, if it wasn’t for the lines, you could still do that park in, in eight or nine hours. Right. It’s still not a full day park. Yeah. So I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know what. I don’t know what they’re gonna do with crowds They, they’re going to have, I know that they’re, uh, that they’re hiring more Streetmosphere characters.
So did you see the recent job posting for improv actors? My sense is that’s going for the Studios were there might even be like a one to one relationship between improv actors and guests. You might have your own improv actor to keep you entertained while you’re waiting in line for Galaxy’s Edge. I don’t know. But yeah, we’ll see. I mean they, I hope they can roll out some fabulous live entertainment.
Dan Heaton: Yeah, they’re going to need something because people, people love Star Wars, but there’s, there’s a limit to what people want to get their money’s worth. Alright, let’s move on. Speaking of crowds, Number Three. I recently heard you did a podcast with the DIS Unplugged where you talked about kind of some theories about, because I went to January. We went last year over Spring Break and we did not go to the busiest week thankfully just by luck, but what I noticed is the lines were long and there were just so many people in the parks.
We went in January… a lot fewer people in the park. Even over mlk weekend you could walk around, but the lines were about the same length. So it kind of gets into what you were talking about in this podcast where you talked about possibly Disney cutting some capacity to save money. So could you delve into this? I have a few questions, but I’m curious just if people haven’t heard kind of the basic gist of this.
Len Testa: Yeah. So here was the, here was what we saw at the end of January we went back and looked at our crowd numbers and we really underestimated the wait times at the rides in Walt Disney World in January of 2018. But then to put it in perspective how much we were off. The average day in Walt Disney World in January was busier in terms of wait times than any 30-day period in summer of 2017.
So even if you, if you took it from a memorial day for 30 days after that, if you took the first week of June when most schools are out of session two, the middle of July, and if you took any part of June to any part of July, end of July to any part of august, end of August on none of that was busier than January of 2018. And for us that was surprising for a couple of reasons.
Len Testa: One, January is typically not that busy. Number two, 95 percent of public schools were in session in January of 2018. Ninety five percent of public schools were out of session in June, July and August of last year. So we’re looking at this going, you know, December was pretty typical. The, our predictions were, were very good effect. Our predictions were very good for all of 2017, but December was fine in terms of crowds, it’s pretty much what we predicted.
My question to our statisticians was this, did we all of a sudden become idiots on January 1st? Like we just completely forget how to predict crowds or you know, what other possible explanations are there? Did all of America’s parents decide independently that on January 1st that truancy was going to be fine and we’re going to take our kids out of school and, and, and take them to Disney World and in way there was some of that, right?
So there was a hurricane back in September of 2017. A lot of people postponed their trips for the rest of the year. A few may have scheduled it in January when work is relatively slow. The economy was also doing really, really well at the end of the year. maybe some people took their anticipated tax breaks, tax cuts and, and visited and that probably explains about two thirds of what we saw, maybe half, but it doesn’t explain the other half.
And so we started looking at it and we started asking around, you know, cast members who work in the parks, cast members who work in offices in Disney or like, dude, what’s, what’s going on here? And what we heard over and over again was some combination of cutbacks and employee shortages. So the way that we checked for that is pretty straightforward. We started counting the number of people who came off of rides and here’s why.
So we know based on historical data that rides like Space Mountain, if they’re operating at full capacity, if every car is full and every car that Disney could possibly put on the track is on the track. Space Mountain can handle around 17, 1800 people an hour, let’s say 1800. So we started counting how many people were coming out of the, uh, out of the rides. And for mid-February when we finally figured out what was going on here, what we saw was the rides were running about 25 percent less than the capacity you would have expected.
Um, so if the ride can handle 1800 people an hour, Disney was running it at 1300 people an hour, 1400 people an hour. In Disneyland, we saw capacities as low as 33 percent. So if a ride capacity for Space Mountain, off top my head, I don’t remember what it is for Disneyland, but you know, if the ride capacity was 1800, they were running it at 600 people an hour.
And it was exactly what you would expect that, you know, when you, when you run the ride at one third capacity, the wait times were over 100 minutes. and it wasn’t just Space Mountain, it was Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, right? So the we measured one day where, you know, from park opening to early afternoon, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, was only running three trains instead of its normal five. And eventually they brought in a fourth and a fifth in the afternoon, but by that point, you know, the wait times were astronomical. If you look at the pattern of this, not only is it there, but it’s at big thunder, you look at other rides, you start to wonder why this is happening. And the only thing that we could come up with is that Disney was trying to keep its maintenance and labor costs down.
Len Testa: So you know, the fewer people that you staff at Space Mountain and these other rides, the less you have to pay in labor, right? And the fewer cars that you run on the rides, the less maintenance you have to do on the track, right? Because the less work, less wear and tear on the track. Less wear and tear on the cars, right. So Disney saves money on that.
So I think what Disney was trying to do in January, and I, I 100 percent believe this is true. Disney was trying to see how much they could cut back capacity without affecting guest satisfaction. And they think they also did not anticipate the extra people that were coming in January. So they tried to cut back capacity to save money at exactly the time when more people than expected were showing up and that’s what caused it.
I believe this in my heart, right to the core of my being. That’s exactly what I believe happened. I think Disney started fixing that in mid-February. And I think like lately over the last, this is the basically the first week of March or so, they’ve been running rides basically at 100 percent capacity everyday. And they should, by the way, because it’s Spring Break, they should run everything at a hundred percent capacity.
Dan Heaton: Well the interesting thing about, there’s a few interesting things. I mean, one I know they’re safe, they can save money that way. I’ve seen it worse at like my local Six Flags where they run like one roller coaster train and it takes forever. But you know, there’s still, when they’re drawing that many people it’s, it stands out. But I just wonder, and I know I’m not running a publicly traded company so this is me as a guest more than anything, but I mean are the gains worth it because I’m curious, you know, in terms of like you mentioned satisfaction because like the day I went, Space Mountain went down for four hours and so then that even like I went, I waited 35 minutes in the FastPass line that night because it was so long…outside and through the whole thing.
I also noticed on our trip we had a great trip but the FastPass lines were long and I wonder then if they are cutting back those things, are they cutting back the number of Fastpasses they’re giving out because they’re probably not because then that just screws up the whole calculation, right? How far can they go? I just feel like it’s very short term. Have you seen anything in your surveys? Like from people going during those times, like more negatives to like, have you seen any change in that so far?
Len Testa: It’s a great point. I haven’t looked because we don’t have, we haven’t compiled yet our surveys for January and February. I will look at that and get back to you on that. That’s an interesting question, but I think that that’s exactly what Disney’s trying to do, that Disney is trying to find this balance between saving money on ride ops and your guest satisfaction and I’ll give you an exact point. Years ago, and I think you remember this, there were times where you could go in like September or October and Disney would be running the rides like Space Mountain so that there would be a 10 minute wait in the afternoon.
Yeah, we, we’ve, we’ve all seen it. Those days are long gone. Starting in about late 2015, Disney started cutting the ride capacity when they thought that a guest of the number of guests in the park was going to be low and they’re using things like FastPass Plus where you’re telling Disney where you’re going to be 60 days in advance.
They’re using data from that to do tests, to do staffing. So what we saw starting in late 2015 is a huge spike in average wait times throughout the park. I’m talking like 40, 50, 60 percent on average over the entire park. You know numbers that, that can’t be explained by attendance. Like there’s no way that attendance went up 40, 50, 60 percent and The Magic Kingdom. And we saw the same thing in 2016. We saw the same thing in 2017. It’s Disney. What Disney is doing is they’re testing how long the shortest line can be before everyone gets aggravated and asks for their money back. Again, among the things that I believe in my heart of hearts, that’s one of them. Absolutely no doubt In my mind that’s what they’re doing.
Dan Heaton: Yeah. I mean, I believe it because even having visited a couple times in January. My favorite memories are like going in January 2005 when literally Pirates had a sign that said zero minutes. And like we walked on, it was just my wife and I while we were. We walked on everything and I was like, this is the greatest thing ever. It cost nothing because it was the post 9/11 and everything, and they did that and then we went kind of each time we’ve gone like since especially the last three or four years, you don’t really see that. You might see it like during the fireworks or late at night. but in general, even a slow day really.
Len Testa: Yeah. You have a minimum 30-minute wait at Space Mountain. I think that’s, yeah, if you ever see a way less than that, someone somewhere in Disney has not done their job and they’ve overstaffed. You know, you’ll, you’ll see the short waits now, but you’ll see them during hard ticket events. Like if you went to the after hours stuff, uh, I went to one a couple of weeks ago and you walked on everything the first time we went to one of the after hours events last year. Laurel went, she said she was literally the only person in the Space Mountain building. And I’ve never, I’ve never experienced that.
I’ve been the only person in Frontierland before, but not on Space Mountain. And that’s kind of amazing. But that, I think that’s what Disney is moving to. It’s, you know, during the day you’re going have a minimum wait of 30 minutes at the headliner rides and if you want to experience a truly empty park, you’ll pay again to visit the park on the same day. So you’ll pay twice.
Dan Heaton: Yeah. And the one thing is, in one sense it’s kind of brilliant from a business perspective because they’re still getting, you know, obviously people still are going, and it kind of makes me crazy.
Len Testa: So Disney has this conference every year in September. It’s Disney’s data science conference and literally the people from Disney’s data science group go, they’re like 60 PHDs, not joking, all very smart people. We send our Statistician Fred Hazleton down and, and Fred actually has an, I’m not making this up Fred actually has a contingent of fans in the Disney data science community that people who work for Disney, honest to God know Fred’s work and admire it. but in the conversations that they had, you know, that, you know, they’re sort of talking over lunch or whatever, you learn what people are working on.
And, and again, I’m not making this up, there’s a guy whose job is to price out hamburgers and hot dogs literally down to the penny to figure out, you know, how much, how much you’re willing to spend and they will run experiments in the parks in different restaurants to trying to figure out whether you’ll pay, you know, nine 89 or nine, nine 90 per hamburger.
Literally, you know, one cent is hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue in and, and so that I’m sure that the data scientists are doing the same thing with the wait times, right? They’re trying to see, you know, if how many people complain it, 20 minutes wait times on average versus 30 minute wait times in. They’re trying to figure out how many refunds they give and whether they save enough on maintenance to do that.
Again, I, I believe this is what’s happening based on the conversations we’ve had with people, but the. I was talking to Fred when he was at this conference and you know, he’s talking to the data science people and it was like Fred, did you ever ask anybody if they actually enjoyed their job, like at the end of the day. Right. When, when you’re on your deathbed, is anyone going to say, you know, I wish I would’ve spent more time pricing those hot dogs?
I just, I just don’t see it. Right. It’s, but there’s value in that to Disney and I think that’s where we’re sort of, we differ in, in, in the value of data science. It sounds hokey, right? But, but use your, use your powers for good right? I don’t know. Anyway, it’s crazy, but it’s true. I mean, if anyone doubts that this is happening, Google it, Google, you know, “Disney data science” and see what comes up in terms of job openings. They are looking for PHDs and data scientists to do exactly the things that I said. And again, that’s, that’s fine. Uh, but I, you know, I kind of hope that one day some of those, some of that computing power and some of that academic research gets pushed into things that improve guest satisfaction, not just revenue. That’s what I’m hopeful for.
Dan Heaton: Well, that’s the thing, it’s like they’re thinking of it in terms of how far can we push it, where we can still get satisfaction or you know, have satisfied customers. But part of it is, how are they going to know? I mean they’ll know because they’ll do surveys and I’ve taken their surveys and that helps. But if somebody just decides I’m not going back. They’re not vocal online, they don’t like to take surveys and they just don’t come. It’s just trickier. I think it’s a dangerous game.
I understand why they’re doing it and it’s working very well for them. But you’ve seen companies not as big as Disney but know like that stop didn’t care about or you know, did something different that just failed, that were huge. And I don’t think they’re going to fail, but I just wonder in a sense, they’re thinking short term, which is okay, but, and they’re relying on things like Galaxy’s Edge where people will accept almost anything to go there.
Len Testa: Yeah. I think that’s the challenge that they’re facing is that there, the risk is that they’re alienating a lot of longterm fans in the pursuit of short term gains. Now I will point out that 20 years from now, the current management team will definitely not be in place 10 years from now. The current management team doesn’t really care about 10 years from now. They care about, you know, this quarter, the next quarter maybe, you know, the fiscal year. And that’s it. But there’s a lot of goodwilll I think that’s being wasted that it doesn’t need to be wasted.
You know, I don’t want to turn this into an entire complaint show, so we should talk about something happier. But Disney made $8,000,000,000 last year. I don’t believe that, you know, the entire, uh, American way of life would collapse or that Disney’s stock price would collapse if they made seven point 9 billion instead. Right? Or 7.8 billion. That number is so large that it defies, you know, grasping, right? They could put more money into the parks and we would understand it. They can pay their employees more. We understand it and there’s, there’s no reason why they can’t do all of those things. Right.
There’s no reason why all of the gains have to go to just the shareholders. Right. I think Disney’s under invested in the theme parks since Bob Iger has been CEO. The numbers bear that out. I don’t think Disney pays its employees enough. Uh, so I don’t think, you know, if you, if you think of the, uh, a company, you know, as, as being a company’s interests as being, you know, its employees, its shareholders and its customers. I think only one of that group is getting any attention from current management. That should be the other two as well. I’ve said enough.
Dan Heaton: I can’t disagree. I have one more negative question but I’m going to pass on that one. I will come back to that.
Len Testa: Was it about parking? I’ve said enough on parking.
Dan Heaton: Okay, well we, we might come back to that or whatnot. Let’s just move on to the next one here. Alright. So let’s do it. ‘
Len Testa: I do think they are doing a number of good things. I think the gondola system is just fascinating.
Dan Heaton: We’re going to talk about that. Okay. It’s funny, I’m, I’m going to read part of my question. I try not to read these but “construction is well underway for the gondolas”. Funny that you said that, but I think these are, these are amazing. We talked about this a year ago. I think these are going to be really exciting. So on a similar note, what do you think, you know, now they’ve done this, they’ve got this still have a huge burden of this transportation structure. Not talking about parking, but what is the next stage like, what’s the next thing they’re going to do? Something like maybe more forward thinking like gondolas or something like that. What do you think they could do to continue down that road?
Len Testa: I’ll be shocked if they don’t do self driving cars. By 2020., if there is not a self driving car on the roads at Disney, someone somewhere will have done something wrong. I 100 percent believe that Disney is the perfect opportunity for self driving cars. So the Reedy Creek Improvement District owns the roads. They could do whatever they want on the roads. if they wanted to paint the roads green and pink so that the self driving car cameras could better make out the lane markers. They can do it. Nothing stopping them. Right. They don’t have to go. They don’t have to ask for voters for approval; and they don’t have to go to the state government. And they could do whatever they want.
If there aren’t self driving cars in Walt Disney World by 2020 and some sort of test, something will have gotten wrong and I think that is really interesting for a number of reasons. One, they can dedicate lanes to the self driving cars so you know how much easier it is now to get to and from Disney Springs because of the dedicated bus lanes. Now are you using those. Dan?
Dan Heaton: I have seen them but haven’t really experienced…
Len Testa: Transformational. I mean you, you no longer have to go through all of the stoplights as regular traffic. But they could do the same thing, right? They could, they could make dedicated self driving car lanes and with that you can do a lot more. So for example, if you know that the self driving car picked up somebody at Pop Century, you could drop them off directly at the Magic Kingdom at the, at the bus entrance because you know, you’ll, you’ll, you’ll be able to know if you’re Disney, whether the car stopped anywhere and picked up any of the passengers and if it didn’t, right.
The people that just got on scanned their magic bands or whatever, when they got into Pop Century, why not just drop them off at the Magic Kingdom, why drop them off at the TTC? So in terms of convenience, there’s a huge opportunity there for self driving cars.
They could also be electric because Disney could recharge them every day and plus they don’t have to, I mean from one end of the, of the property to the other, what is it, 20 miles? I mean you could with a 200 mile range, they could do 10 trips a day, you know, and uh, before recharging. And so you could have a fleet of them. where did he go to a given time at .It’ll, it combines the sort of, the direct point to point transportation that Americans have come to expect with the cool factor of self driving cars. I think that’s a huge, huge, huge opportunity for Disney. Like I said, it’s just, it’s too much money for Disney to pass up.
Dan Heaton: Yeah. I would love to see it because I also think too, if they had it at Disney World, if I’m somebody who would love to see it in a one, I don’t want my daughters to have to drive, you know, especially my youngest daughter because she’s five.
Len Testa: There’s no way she’ll ever learn to drive. If your five year old learns to drive, it’ll be for the same reason that she learns to ride a horse because she wants to right because it’s going to be a hobby. Not because she has to. I don’t, I don’t think in 10 years anyone will learn to. Like I’ve told my daughter who’s 19, she’s the last generation that will, will learn to drive because her kids, her kids won’t. Her kids will do it again if you want to do as a hobby.
Dan Heaton: Yeah. Like riding a horse or riding a bike, and it won’t even be that normal. But you know something that you do as a hobby. Yeah. I mean that’s a little selfish, but really I would love it. You know, kind of how originally way back Epcot was kind of supposed to be where you have these new technologies, you show them off at Disney World where all the people are going and they get more excited and then they go home and they see these things.
Len Testa: Oh yeah, and the business opportunity! For the vast majority of Americans, if they go to Disney World and they step inside a self-driving car, that will be literally the only time they’ve ever been in a self-driving car. Imagine the branding opportunity there. If it’s a Tesla or it’s a GM or some other brand, imagine the mind-blowing experience that those people will have. Not only is it Disney World, but it’s a self-driving car. I mean, I can’t imagine. I can’t imagine the size of the truck that you would need to haul around all of the money you would make as a self driving car manufacturer. If you could do that. I the size of the truck. Just my mind can’t fit that in here.
Dan Heaton: I hope they’re, that they’re trying to figure this out because I would love to see them be at the forefront of it.
Len Testa: So I complained about a lot of things, but I say that the transportation department in Disney has been killing it the last couple of years. Everything that they’ve done has been fantastic. I don’t know who’s, who’s heading up transportation in, in Disney World, but they are doing a fantastic job over the last couple of years.
Dan Heaton: Yeah, the gondolas. I mean, I’m really excited to see. I want them to be huge successes, not just for me or for, you know, when we go, I wanted to be a success because I feel like if they, If they’re a hit that’s only going to encourage Disney to do more things like that and people love them. And most importantly, If they do have, are good operationally that they could, they could be huge. Now that was question four. I’m going to jump back to question five.
We’ll be on the same topic just because I don’t want us to be here for six hours. But um, so my concern though is that they do self-driving cars. They could treat them like the Minnie Vans where the Minnie Vans I think, are a cool service, not the airport ridiculous charge, but it’s kind of a cool thing. but would they just use them and then charge you a crazy amount like the or would they use it more as like a substitute for the bus system? What do you, where do you think they would leave them there?
Len Testa: I see it. That’s an interesting question. I think they would probably charge for it, but I don’t think it would be as much as a Lyft because you wouldn’t have the, the liability associated with a human driver and you wouldn’t have to pay the human driver. Plus if they’re doing it with self-driving cars, it would probably be subsidized or underwritten by whoever’s making the self-driving cars.
Yeah. So I wouldn’t expect it to be anywhere near the cost of an Uber or a Lyft, which let’s face it now. I mean for me to get from my apartment to the Studios is literally five dollars, sixty five cents on Uber. It’s the least expensive charge that I could possibly get. So I mean, would, what would a self-driving car be? Five bucks, right? They can’t go crazy. And again, you would do it just to say you did it.
Dan Heaton: Yeah. So that’s, that’s interesting. I’m glad to hear your excitement about it because it’s one of those things where a part of me thinks even not just at Disney in life because part of me thinks that they’re going to be here and part of me thinks, man, people are so stubborn. They’re just gonna want to drive their cars forever and it’s not going to take off like it should.
Len Testa: When was last time you drove to Disney, Dan?
Dan Heaton: Well we did it once last spring and I think we don’t really want to do that again from Missouri.
Len Testa: So when I was in North Carolina, I would drive down every couple of weeks and you know, get to the point where I stopped taking the most direct route because I was bored with it. And, but I remember thinking to myself, you know, there’s gonna come a day where it’s going to be basically like being on a train, but in your car where the car will drive, you can sit back and read and just think how much more productive you would be.
Len Testa: Oh yeah. Number one, it’s, it’s vastly cheaper than flying. Driving is still vastly cheaper than flying for anything under 12 to 15 hours. If you could, if you could do that drive and be safe and not have to pay attention second by second where, you know, where you could watch TV or read a book or surf the web or whatever, get some work done. It’s a vastly different experience. And I think that’s, that’s a lot of opportunity for people to gain back some time in their lives, especially on long commutes. So I think, I think it’s coming
Dan Heaton: Well. Great. That, that excites me. So on a similar note, my next question is, okay, so we’re talking about right now it’s, it’s kind of more of a theoretical question, but I think you’re game for it. We’re really in this like blockbuster era of theme parks we’re getting big budgets and the prices are high and it’s, you know, IP and everything and you know, there was a slowdown in the two thousands, but we saw a little bit of this in the nineties, but now it’s like crazy.
So beyond this, let’s look beyond the 50th, beyond what’s going on right now, like what’s the next evolution for theme parks? I mean, what do we see? Like, you know what I’m trying to think of like blue sky meetings now I know Disney might not be thinking about it, but the thinkers that they have at their company, like what? Like beyond, let’s create an immersive land, let’s bring in an IP, like Galaxy’s Edge. What’s the next step for people In terms of theme parks?
Len Testa: You know, a couple of years ago I would’ve said, you know, virtual reality or augmented reality, but I think, I think it’s going to be this. I think it’s going be the theme parks, know who you are and remember you. So like you’ll be able to play a role when you’re in the theme parks. We’ve talked about this a little bit with Galaxy’s Edge where depending on what you do on the Millennium Falcon ride, the outcome of that will follow you through the land, right?
So, as you’re interacting with characters or with the droids they’ll know what you did on the Millennium Falcon ride. When you go back to your hotel, your hotel will know what you did in the Millennium Falcon ride. But imagine that not only over a trip, but over a lifetime where you gain experience and credibility or whatever metrics Disney wants to measure it. Imagine that over a lifetime where you go back and the characters that you meet know what you did the last time and what you enjoyed, you know, and it may sound a little bit creepy to some people you know, they know what kind of food you like or you know in Disney offers you coupons for those food or whatever.
The ability. I think the technology’s there to, to hyper personalize everybody’s trip and to maintain that over time and to give you rewards for coming back again and again. And I think that’s the thing that you’re going to see the, you know, whether VR makes it as a, as a technology or augmented reality makes it as a technology. I don’t know. I mean, I see pros and cons on it. By the way, have you seen The Void at Disney Springs?
Dan Heaton: I have not.
Len Testa: Woo! Fantastic. It’s really great. Oh my god. Best thing Disney’s done in, in, in the last year. Easy. Then we’ll talk about it. But yeah, I think, I think the idea of personalization where you’re, you’ll be able to create a persona that follows you around the park and that has a history in the parks, I think is something that no one’s done it. Disney can do it. Like I don’t see a Six Flags doing that. There’s no real adventure in Six Flags. Six Flags has excellent rides. But it’s not a theme park. But in Disney, you know, if you can, you know, if, Jack Sparrow knows what you did in the rest of Adventureland, that starts to become interesting. So I think that’s going to be the big thing.
Dan Heaton: Yeah. That interests me because you see a little things now like where they, I mean they had a few tests, I remember I heard like at Disneyland with the train around Tomorrowland when I came out with Plus Ultra and then you see like Knott’s Berry Farm has something like this or you do little tasks inside of the land, you know, in their ghost town. but this almost interests because this is taking that to like, that is just like a setup and this is something completely different. I mean I think it’s cool. I mean people are going to look at it and go, well, is that like Westworld or something?
Len Testa: That’s exactly it! That’s exactly the analogy I was going to make! But what, let me ask you this question, other than the, the, you know, the robots what prevents Disney from doing that sort of state or game management in Disney World. The technology exists. The, you could do it and it’s, you know, it’s. So it’s a billion dollars. Okay. Whatever. Just made $8,000,000,000 last year. So what’s a billion dollars? Right? But imagine, imagine that your vacation isn’t just a vacation, but it’s a story that evolves over the entire length of the trip day by day, and that at the end of it, it’s a coherent narrative where you can say, here was yours, the story of my vacation. That’s amazIng, if they could do it.
Again, the technology’s there to do it. I think the challenge is, is there enough skill that is the company to write that sort of storyline? Remember in, in Westworld, it’s the British guy that writes the stories. Yeah. What are the stories? And by the way, I think this is the big challenge in, um, in the Star Wars hotel this, the challenges in the technology of, you know, pretending video screens or windows and things like that. That’s, that’s all doable. I, I had it in my kitchen two years ago. It’s not hard.
I think the challenge for them is in the story and the game play and because there are so many things that people can do and that you want to make it as realistic as possible, which means you want to give people as many options as possible. That’s the huge challenge in managing that narrative.
Dan Heaton: Yeah, and also I think I agree with that and the Star Wars Hotel is a perfect example as kind of the next stage from things like those specific games in lands. It’s like the next level of that. So it’s almost like you’re going in levels to me almost like the biggest hurdles are the amount of people that go to Disney World. I almost feel like you’d have to start out and have a new park and then charge people like Discovery Cove or something level or more probably than that. Kinda like the hotel. You’d have to charge them a crazy amount at first and then maybe as you went along, because that’s what I would love if it was something that everyone could do, I don’t know how you do that. They’d have to hire so many people.
Len Testa: Well, I think the hotel is a great example because it’s a few hundred, a few hundred people you can manage that, but even then that’s, that’s an enormous amount of complexity. Like I can’t wrap my head around how much complexity that is and for it to be interesting they have, they’re gonna have to be so many options available at each step that to understand the entire game will require a computer. Like there’s no way that a human is going to be able to manage all of that complexity, you know, to be able to do it for 60,000 people, 70,000 people in the Magic Kingdom on a given day.
Again, I can’t imagine that technology, but again, if you throw a billion dollars at the problem, could you solve it? Again? It’s not technology that’s an issue. It’s, you know, can I, can I for a billion dollars, can I hire the best game play people to write the most elaborate one-day game I’ve ever seen a billion dollars is a lot of money and I, I tell people this all the time. You’d be surprised what you can do with $100,000. Oh yeah. You know as well you can, you can accomplish with 100 grand, but with a billion dollars, which is what, 10, 100,000, 10,000 times larger. If my math is correct, it’s a staggering amount of money in Disney has that money.
They, they can do some amazing things with it. So I hope that they have the will to do it. So. And I think they did. I think eventually they will. I think there are enough people, they might not spend a billion dollars on it, but I think somewhere in the Disney company there are people who are thinking exactly the same things in, in who are hopefully ambitious enough to get it done.
Dan Heaton: Well that’s really interesting. I, I’m excited to see to see where that goes and I’m not that worried. I mean, you know, I’m worried about a lot of things but that is not one of my top worries.
Len Testa: I would love to interact with, with robots, sentient robots like Westworld. Parts of Westworld I think are a little bit creepy, but um, but the idea that you can talk to it, it doesn’t have to be robots too. It can be people, right? I mean, we’re not gonna. We’re not gonna shoot them. So it’s, it’s, it’s okay if there are people. Yeah. But uh, but the idea that they can remember things and interact, uh, I think is super, super interesting and again, technology is going to be the backup, backbone for that, but the story is going to be the most important.
Dan Heaton: Yeah. It’s really very similar to how things go with almost any theme park attraction. It’s like, I mean, I don’t mean story like from a to b must be narrative, but just things that just are a mess just don’t work. So yeah. And this on that level. Okay, well for my final question is actually kind of a cheat a little bit. It’s actually a bunch of questions, but it’s what I call the rapid fire question round. I’m going to do. It’s just like seven or eight questions. I’m just gonna ask you a question. Give just what you think and that’ll be it. If price is no object, what is the “can’t miss” restaurant to visit at Disney Springs?
Len Testa: At Disney Springs. Actually, there’s nothing that’s not affordable at Disney Springs. So it’s going to be depending on what you want.
Dan Heaton: What’s the best thing you should do there? If you’re one, one restaurant, you’re the only person you can go are the only one restaurant you’d go to. You’d never been there. What’s the one that somebody should see?
Len Testa: Boathouse because it has a little bit something for everyone. My number two choice was Homecoming, which has a smaller menu than Boathouse, but everything they do is fantastic. My third would have been the Edison, by the way. I really liked The Edison’s menu..
Dan Heaton: Cool. All right. So which upcoming expansion at Disney or Universal is going to land with the biggest thud? Or even a new attraction. Just something coming that’s going to not work.
Len Testa: Pixar Pier at Disneyland. I, I don’t know what they were thinking there.
Dan Heaton: Yeah. Alright. True or false? Future World will have a different name 10 years from now.
Len Testa: True. it has to because it’s no longer the future. This is my big complaint that there’s no, there’s no consistent theming anywhere at Disney theme parks anymore.
Dan Heaton: Yeah. What Disney World resort is the most underrated resort?
Len Testa: Ooh. That’s a great question. I think a lot of people are sleeping on the Wilderness Lodge if you’ve been there recently. It’s beautiful. They’ve got, all their dining options are good. You know, the cabins are pricey at 1$,800 to $2,000 a night, but they’re vastly better than what was happening at the Polynesian. I love the, the cabins. I’m not going to stay there again because during the night, but everything that the will, everything that this needs done at the Wilderness Lodge is fantastic. In fact, in general, anything, Disney’s pouring a lot of money into the hotel.s It’s not really say resorts and hotels. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Wilderness Lodge is kind of fantastic.
Dan Heaton: Yeah. I’ve stayed at the Animal Kingdom Lodge a few times and love it.
Len Testa: You haven’t stayed at the Wilderness Lodge?
Dan Heaton: No. I’ve been trying to get my wife to want to stay there.
Len Testa: Dude, stay at the Wilderness Lodge. If you don’t like it, I will pay for your room. Go, go stay at the Wilderness Lodge.
Dan Heaton: It’s on the list. I tell you, the top of the list.
Len Testa: The rooms themselves aren’t that great. I mean, I would stay DVC because you get a little more room and I would stay at DVC in the main building. Not in Boulder Ridge, whatever, whatever name they’re calling it. The old Wilderness Lodge. Stay in the main building. But I mean the background music is great. The food is good. The setting is unbelievable. It’s very quiet and they put a lot of money into it recently. It looks really, really good.
Dan Heaton: Yeah. Alright. So most important question. Sammy Hagar or Gary Cherone?
Len Testa: Oh, Sammy Hagar all the way. I’ve never listened to Van Halen 3, honest to god, I’ve never listened to a complete song from Van Halen 3. It’s just not my thing. There’s nothing wrong with Sammy Hagar. The only, the only thing wrong with Sammy Hagar is he suffers in comparison to David Lee Roth, but I think Sammy, he’s a decent person, good singer. I, I enjoy all of the Sammy era songs with Van Halen. I prefer David Lee Roth, but there’s nothing wrong with Sammy Hagar. And I wish him nothing but the best. Also, he and I drink tequila, so you know already similar. Yeah, nothing, nothing wrong with. Actually the more controversial question would have been Wolfie or Michael Anthony.
Dan Heaton: I didn’t want to ask you David Lee Roth or Sammy Hagar because I thought that would be too easy.
Len Testa: It’s obvious. Again, there’s nothing wrong with Cherone either. Cherone was put in a no win situation with Van Halen 3. There was no way that that fans were going to accept a third lead singer for the band. It’s not going to happen.
Dan Heaton: Yeah. That was a brave move by him to even do that.
Len Testa: I’ll kind of credit for attempting it, right? I mean it’s wait. What is this thing? It’s, it’s different to talk of bulls than to be in the bull ring. Right. Which I, which I love. Right. So he did it.
Dan Heaton: Okay, last question. I’ve cut a few because you know, we’re still, I feel like we can’t have rapid fire. I tried this one other time but it worked much better. All right. So here’s the big question. How long in minutes will the line be for the battle attraction at Galaxy’s Edge on its official opening day, what’s the maximum it’s going to hit?
Len Testa: 800. Eight hundred. At least 8. Okay. If it’s less than 600, shocked, like I will, I will start taking bets now that it’s, it will not be less than 600, but I think 800.
Dan Heaton: That’s going to be insane. I’ll be watching comfortably from home.
Len Testa: What I’m saying is an eight to 10 hour wait to get on the ride and I’ll put money down that right now.
Dan Heaton: Okay. So this was a lot of fun. Thank you. I feel like we hit on a lot of interesting things and I, I even ditched the parking question because that’s just gonna make me mad if I talk about that.
Len Testa: There’s no, there’s no rationale for it. So. But listen. I think if they, if they hit a home run with Galaxy’s Edge, a lot of people will forgive a lot of things. So let’s see. Let’s see what happens there. I hope they pull it off.
Dan Heaton: Well, I’m excited to have so much to look forward to. I mean so many things coming. Even if I don’t love every single one, there’s a lot happening right now. It’s hard to. Hard to complain about that.
Len Testa: No, I mean the fact that there’s so much stuff in the pipeline I think is a good. I would like to see this continue rolling through, you know, past 2021. So you know, if we, if we get the same level of activity through 2025, I will start to feel better about the company.
Dan Heaton: Yeah. Me too. Okay. So if listeners are not familiar with what you’re doing and want to learn more, what’s the best place to go online to find out what you’re doing with everything?
Len Testa: So, I run the website, Touringplans.com, where we have trip planning advice and tools. Some of them are unique so they’ll actually work. Uh, you can also find me on the Disney Dish Podcast with Jim Hill. It’s Disney Dish dot Bandcamp dot com. And then of course I’m on Twitter at Len Testa.
Dan Heaton: Well excellent, Len. This was, this was really fun. I have some things I’m more excited about and others, um, even grumpier about. But, I’m really happy that you came on. Thanks so much.
Len Testa: Thanks for the opportunity; I appreciate it, Dan.
Dan Heaton: If you’d like to know more about what’s happening here at The Tomorrow Society, you can go to tomorrowsociety.com and check out the blog and stay up to date on all the latest podcasts. You can also follow me on Twitter at tomorrowsoc or Facebook or Instagram at tomorrowsociety. If you’d like to get ahold of me, you can email me at dan at tomorrowsociety.com. The music for this podcast is composed by Adam Hucke and performed by the Sophisticated Babies.
If you’d like to stay up to date on the latest episodes, you can subscribe to the Tomorrow Society Podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite provider, and don’t forget to leave a rating or review. It’s a great way for more people to find out about the show. I’ve got a lot more great interviews coming up in the near future, so definitely stay tuned. Thanks for listening, and I will talk to you again very soon.
Leave a Reply